Lucetific - (AU) Eventfic - The Invasion
Jun. 28th, 2012 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seikilosTitle: A Chance Rescue
Fandoms:![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
luceti, Tales of Legendia, Persona 3
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG
Words: 1272
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the above fandoms.
Summary: Fenimore is grateful that Grune asked a friend of hers to watch over them, really she is--but did it have to be this friend?
Author's Notes: So my brain had another one of those "turn a chance (hah) remark into a fic series" moments again. This time, there'll be onlytwo three two three fics...as of right now. Unless I get too caught up in the tarot symbolism of Persona 3, in which case send help now.
Basically, I was regretting Grune not getting the chance to see/fight alongside Ryoji while he's in his true form and joked with Snarky, his mun, that Grune would just have to ask Ryoji to look after Fenimore and Sophie while she's away on the draft. And then my brain did its thing and here we are.
Thanks a lot to Snarky for helping me with the Persona 3 things and pointing me in the right direction so I could properly wiki stuff. Any mistakes here are definitely my own.
With shaking hands, Fenimore forced another chair against the weakening barricade. Terror fueled her shove too well, and the chair crashed into the pile at House 34's door as the droids outside struck another mechanically relentless blow.
Fenimore spun, frantically searching for more furniture—
"Sophie! You need to hide!" Her voice cracked on the last word. No use trying to pretend she was calm now.
Standing nearby in the entryway, Sophie shook her head, and Nerifes, why did she have to be so stubborn? "Gonna help."
"You can help by hiding!" Fenimore snapped out. Where was Walter? If he didn't come back right now. . . .
The droids crashed against the barricade again, the Shift Hunter snarled—and then came the sound of smashing machinery.
Fenimore's mouth dropped open and she ran to the window. Holding her breath, she twitched aside the curtains. At first, she couldn't make out a thing—but then a long, thin-bladed sword swept into view, there was the screech of metal on metal and a howl cut short, and Fenimore nearly swallowed her heart.
The sword drew back and its wielder stepped fully into her sightline.
All that stopped her scream was Sophie's presence behind her.
Their "saviour" was unnaturally tall, at least twice her height even hunched over as it was. Streamers of light shone all around its body, twisting to the grey-clouded sky. Chains and some sort of planks she couldn't quite make out through the teeming rain surrounded it, back and sides. Its skin was a pale, sickly purple, and its face. . . .
Oh, Nerifes, its face.
Its face was a skull, its jaw split completely from the upper half. It was a metallic monster's skull, it had to be. No Ferines and no Orerines had a bone structure like that.
Sophie tugged on her dress as the massive sword struck out again. "I wanna see!"
"No you don't!" Fenimore rasped and let the curtain fall.
"I do!"
Fenimore dropped to the floor and gathered the resisting little girl to her. Breathing in the faint, flowery scent of Sophie's shampoo, she slammed her eyes shut and prayed to a god that had not seemed so distant since her months in that hateful, hopeless prison.
It took her some time to recognize when the battle had ended. Sophie was on the verge of pounding her with her fists when Fenimore was at last able to sit back and let her go.
"Sophie-chan?"
Fenimore's scream finally tore loose, brief but piercing. The shock of another voice was just too much. The sound of it was gentler than she would have expected, but it was still distorted and very clearly did not belong to anything natural.
"Are you okay?" She heard movement outside.
Forcing herself all the way, Fenimore stood. Opened the curtains. . . . Opened the window.
"W—" Fenimore tried to swallow, coughed. "We're okay."
The too-tall figure drew closer, stooping further and stretching out its—his neck to peer in the window, and Fenimore pressed both her hands against her mouth nearly had enough to bruise. Those weren't planks surrounding him—they were coffin lids.
The—the monstrosity, their rescuer sounded relieved when he said, "Oh, good. Are you Fenimore-chan?"
She nodded, beyond all else.
"Grune-chan asked me to watch over you while she was away," he explained, still speaking in that voice that should have been calling down evil curses on them, not inquiring anxiously about their safety.
She pulled her hands from her mouth and gripped the windowsill instead. "Grune . . . s-sent you?"
Of course. She . . . was really going to have to have a talk with Grune when she got back.
The massive head nodded. "Is Sophie-chan there?"
Fenimore glanced behind her. "Yes, she's—she's fine."
"I wanna see!" Sophie demanded, quite clearly out of patience.
"Just a minute." Fenimore knelt down before the glaring little girl. As softly as she could, she whispered, "Are you sure? He looks" —terrifying— "a little scary."
Sophie nodded firmly. "Yeah."
Fenimore let out a breath. ". . . All right."
Carefully, with arms as weak as pondwater, she gathered Sophie up and lifted her to the windowsill. Then she gasped—he had gotten even closer and had sheathed his sword to lean his hands on their windowsill. The idea of something that looked like that touching her house sent a chill through her.
That sight clearly had no such effect on Sophie, though. Fenimore couldn't see her expression due to the way she was holding her, but she seemed to be looking him over not with fear, but with interest.
"Are you Sophie-chan?" their saviour asked. Fenimore would have thought he sounded shy, but that was ridiculous.
"I'm Sophie," the girl emphasized.
"Oh, yes, I know," he replied. "Sophie-chan is just like a nickname."
Sophie didn't protest further. Clearly, after living with Norma, that explanation was more than sufficient. Instead, she told him, "You're too big."
Fenimore tensed, but rather than take offence, he actually seemed to try to make himself look smaller—not that it worked.
"Do you think so?"
"Yeah. You won't fit in the house. Where do you live?"
"Sophie, be polite," Fenimore said entirely automatically; since this bizarre conversation had started, her brain had shut down in self-defence.
Sophie twisted in her arms to look back at her. "But I wanna know."
"It's all right." . . . Was that supposed to be a smile?
He transferred his eyeless gaze from her to Sophie. "I live in a house. I'm not usually this big. I just became this way to protect you and Fenimore-chan."
Once again, the explanation was enough to satisfy Sophie, even if it certainly wasn't enough for Fenimore.
But that really didn't matter now. It was time to steel herself and address this . . . person. The sooner she did, the sooner he would be gone.
"Thank you for saving us," she made herself say, her voice only trembling a little. She gave Sophie a small jiggle. "Sophie?"
"Yeah."
She really was going to have put more work into her manners.
And she had no idea how someone who looked like that could sound pleased, but somehow, he did.
"I'm just happy I could help."
He glanced backwards at Grune's by now flooded garden, seemingly unaware of the rain that beat down on him. Then, unfortunately, he turned back to her and Sophie.
"I should keep moving. Tell Grune-chan I'll help her clean up her garden when everything's done, all right?"
Fenimore nodded. The image of their rescuer attempting to replant a tiny pink flower, coffin lids shading it from the sun, blinked into her mind and she only just bit back the resulting high-pitched giggle.
"We will," she promised. Go away go away go away. . . .
That bizarre, completely wrong attempt at a smile appears on his face again. "Thank you. Goodbye, Fenimore-chan. Goodbye, Sophie-chan."
"Bye." Sophie waved.
Fenimore only turned and set down the little girl. Thank Nerifes.
As she was closing the window, Sophie asked, "When's he coming back?"
Hopefully never. "I don't know."
"He's cool."
Fenimore allowed herself just one moment to stare. What kind of girl was she raising?
Then she turned back to the window and closed it the rest of the way. Towels to wipe up the rain that had blown in and more chairs for the barricade. . . . And all the food forbidden by her diet that she could eat. That was all that was happening for the next hour at least. Until she had recovered, the rest of the world could handle itself.
Fandoms:
luceti, Tales of Legendia, Persona 3Genre: Gen
Rating: PG
Words: 1272
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the above fandoms.
Summary: Fenimore is grateful that Grune asked a friend of hers to watch over them, really she is--but did it have to be this friend?
Author's Notes: So my brain had another one of those "turn a chance (hah) remark into a fic series" moments again. This time, there'll be only
Basically, I was regretting Grune not getting the chance to see/fight alongside Ryoji while he's in his true form and joked with Snarky, his mun, that Grune would just have to ask Ryoji to look after Fenimore and Sophie while she's away on the draft. And then my brain did its thing and here we are.
Thanks a lot to Snarky for helping me with the Persona 3 things and pointing me in the right direction so I could properly wiki stuff. Any mistakes here are definitely my own.
With shaking hands, Fenimore forced another chair against the weakening barricade. Terror fueled her shove too well, and the chair crashed into the pile at House 34's door as the droids outside struck another mechanically relentless blow.
Fenimore spun, frantically searching for more furniture—
"Sophie! You need to hide!" Her voice cracked on the last word. No use trying to pretend she was calm now.
Standing nearby in the entryway, Sophie shook her head, and Nerifes, why did she have to be so stubborn? "Gonna help."
"You can help by hiding!" Fenimore snapped out. Where was Walter? If he didn't come back right now. . . .
The droids crashed against the barricade again, the Shift Hunter snarled—and then came the sound of smashing machinery.
Fenimore's mouth dropped open and she ran to the window. Holding her breath, she twitched aside the curtains. At first, she couldn't make out a thing—but then a long, thin-bladed sword swept into view, there was the screech of metal on metal and a howl cut short, and Fenimore nearly swallowed her heart.
The sword drew back and its wielder stepped fully into her sightline.
All that stopped her scream was Sophie's presence behind her.
Their "saviour" was unnaturally tall, at least twice her height even hunched over as it was. Streamers of light shone all around its body, twisting to the grey-clouded sky. Chains and some sort of planks she couldn't quite make out through the teeming rain surrounded it, back and sides. Its skin was a pale, sickly purple, and its face. . . .
Oh, Nerifes, its face.
Its face was a skull, its jaw split completely from the upper half. It was a metallic monster's skull, it had to be. No Ferines and no Orerines had a bone structure like that.
Sophie tugged on her dress as the massive sword struck out again. "I wanna see!"
"No you don't!" Fenimore rasped and let the curtain fall.
"I do!"
Fenimore dropped to the floor and gathered the resisting little girl to her. Breathing in the faint, flowery scent of Sophie's shampoo, she slammed her eyes shut and prayed to a god that had not seemed so distant since her months in that hateful, hopeless prison.
It took her some time to recognize when the battle had ended. Sophie was on the verge of pounding her with her fists when Fenimore was at last able to sit back and let her go.
"Sophie-chan?"
Fenimore's scream finally tore loose, brief but piercing. The shock of another voice was just too much. The sound of it was gentler than she would have expected, but it was still distorted and very clearly did not belong to anything natural.
"Are you okay?" She heard movement outside.
Forcing herself all the way, Fenimore stood. Opened the curtains. . . . Opened the window.
"W—" Fenimore tried to swallow, coughed. "We're okay."
The too-tall figure drew closer, stooping further and stretching out its—his neck to peer in the window, and Fenimore pressed both her hands against her mouth nearly had enough to bruise. Those weren't planks surrounding him—they were coffin lids.
The—the monstrosity, their rescuer sounded relieved when he said, "Oh, good. Are you Fenimore-chan?"
She nodded, beyond all else.
"Grune-chan asked me to watch over you while she was away," he explained, still speaking in that voice that should have been calling down evil curses on them, not inquiring anxiously about their safety.
She pulled her hands from her mouth and gripped the windowsill instead. "Grune . . . s-sent you?"
Of course. She . . . was really going to have to have a talk with Grune when she got back.
The massive head nodded. "Is Sophie-chan there?"
Fenimore glanced behind her. "Yes, she's—she's fine."
"I wanna see!" Sophie demanded, quite clearly out of patience.
"Just a minute." Fenimore knelt down before the glaring little girl. As softly as she could, she whispered, "Are you sure? He looks" —terrifying— "a little scary."
Sophie nodded firmly. "Yeah."
Fenimore let out a breath. ". . . All right."
Carefully, with arms as weak as pondwater, she gathered Sophie up and lifted her to the windowsill. Then she gasped—he had gotten even closer and had sheathed his sword to lean his hands on their windowsill. The idea of something that looked like that touching her house sent a chill through her.
That sight clearly had no such effect on Sophie, though. Fenimore couldn't see her expression due to the way she was holding her, but she seemed to be looking him over not with fear, but with interest.
"Are you Sophie-chan?" their saviour asked. Fenimore would have thought he sounded shy, but that was ridiculous.
"I'm Sophie," the girl emphasized.
"Oh, yes, I know," he replied. "Sophie-chan is just like a nickname."
Sophie didn't protest further. Clearly, after living with Norma, that explanation was more than sufficient. Instead, she told him, "You're too big."
Fenimore tensed, but rather than take offence, he actually seemed to try to make himself look smaller—not that it worked.
"Do you think so?"
"Yeah. You won't fit in the house. Where do you live?"
"Sophie, be polite," Fenimore said entirely automatically; since this bizarre conversation had started, her brain had shut down in self-defence.
Sophie twisted in her arms to look back at her. "But I wanna know."
"It's all right." . . . Was that supposed to be a smile?
He transferred his eyeless gaze from her to Sophie. "I live in a house. I'm not usually this big. I just became this way to protect you and Fenimore-chan."
Once again, the explanation was enough to satisfy Sophie, even if it certainly wasn't enough for Fenimore.
But that really didn't matter now. It was time to steel herself and address this . . . person. The sooner she did, the sooner he would be gone.
"Thank you for saving us," she made herself say, her voice only trembling a little. She gave Sophie a small jiggle. "Sophie?"
"Yeah."
She really was going to have put more work into her manners.
And she had no idea how someone who looked like that could sound pleased, but somehow, he did.
"I'm just happy I could help."
He glanced backwards at Grune's by now flooded garden, seemingly unaware of the rain that beat down on him. Then, unfortunately, he turned back to her and Sophie.
"I should keep moving. Tell Grune-chan I'll help her clean up her garden when everything's done, all right?"
Fenimore nodded. The image of their rescuer attempting to replant a tiny pink flower, coffin lids shading it from the sun, blinked into her mind and she only just bit back the resulting high-pitched giggle.
"We will," she promised. Go away go away go away. . . .
That bizarre, completely wrong attempt at a smile appears on his face again. "Thank you. Goodbye, Fenimore-chan. Goodbye, Sophie-chan."
"Bye." Sophie waved.
Fenimore only turned and set down the little girl. Thank Nerifes.
As she was closing the window, Sophie asked, "When's he coming back?"
Hopefully never. "I don't know."
"He's cool."
Fenimore allowed herself just one moment to stare. What kind of girl was she raising?
Then she turned back to the window and closed it the rest of the way. Towels to wipe up the rain that had blown in and more chairs for the barricade. . . . And all the food forbidden by her diet that she could eat. That was all that was happening for the next hour at least. Until she had recovered, the rest of the world could handle itself.
finally got around to reading this
Date: 2012-07-03 06:41 am (UTC)Fenimore allowed herself just one moment to stare. What kind of girl
whenwas she raising?An awesomely badass one. This will be the girl who will put on her sunglasses and walk away from an explosion without missing a beat. YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHH
I love the dissonance of Ryoji having his normal speech patterns while in his true form and Fenimore just flipping her shit about it instead of being relieved that he's not aiming to murdelate them. XD And Sophie is just darling, too. She and Graces!Sophie need to form the Sophie Collective. :|b Or the Crablette Collective, as was suggested on Plurk. Looking forward to the next couple of fics in this series. mo_om
Thank you~
Date: 2012-07-03 06:32 pm (UTC)Ahem.
Spoilers: Sophie is gonna grow up to be the biggest badass in House 34. Trufax.
Yeah, man, I had so fun with Ryoji's speech patterns, because it's just plain not what you expect from someone who looks like this. Fenimore kind of was worried they were going to get murdelated next if they weren't careful, buuuut it was easier for her to fixate on that. XD
And haha, Sophie from Howl's Moving Castle needs to join this collective. It'd be great.
Thanks! I've got a crackfic to post hopefully by Thursday, but then I'll be getting to the next one, so yup! ♥